... But can you lift it?

I have three projects underway at the moment each featuring Austin Sevens…when you work alone, in a non-Austin environment, you need something simple and you can lift by yourself! The car pictured below was the first Seven I attempted to build. I began about 15 years ago, quite a while before leaving the UK in 1997. I simply gathered major parts of circa 1926 vintage and boxes and boxes of bits. Along the way I was fortunate enough to acquire a Tom Abernethey replica Gordon England Cup body (it’s supposedly the last he built – number 24 – but whether or not that’s the case I don’t know). So this is to be a Gordon England Cup replica and as authentic as I can make it. I hate unoriginality. My aim was to have the engine running by Christmas 2007 – I didn’t and still don’t! When you build a car from boxes of bits you soon discover that the bits in the boxes are never all from the same car and there’s usually enough pieces over to build at least one other. So it was with me. I’d come by what was actually a genuine ‘Cup’ frame and the remains of its original body. However, someone had robbed it of its chassis number – yes, we have these nefarious characters in Austin Seven circles as well – so no one is ever going to be convinced it’s a real one. Thus project number two uses the ‘Cup’ chassis but it will get a wooden boat tail body based on a very attractive Gwynne Eight of which I’ve seen pictures. The fittings and furnishings will be French as I’m pretending this car was bodied in France in about 1928. That apart it makes life a helluva lot easier. Ducellier kit is fairly common here; Lucas is not!Project number three is a Special I hope to race. The chassis came to me as a swap for an early electrical cut-out. I don’t know how the ‘swapee’ got on with his cut-out but my part of the deal was found to have a crack in the left side rail.The frame has been repaired and was going to be fitted with a ‘dropped’ front axle and flattened spring all located in the traditional Austin Seven manner. However, I decided the axle modification is too difficult. Even if there was someone here prepared to make the bend – and there’s not; if you think about it, the whole exercise is a lot more complicated than it at first sounds. So chassis lowering will be achieved with some 15-inch diameter wheels. I have some engines on which to try my hand at tuning, three and four speed gearboxes and a rear axle so the project could soon be well on the way. I hope the final result will incorporate a right hand gear change and handbrake (vintage Bentley pretensions) and a body akin to a Type 35 Bugatti. Dream on you say! Well, we’ll see.